U_News @4 and RJI explore alternative interactive news model
In an effort to break the traditional mold, as most other media platforms have, KOMU-TV 8 has created a unqiue space for journalists that no other broadcast has. When Oprah announced her show was coming to an end, Marty Siddall, KOMU general manager, Stacey Woelfel, KOMU news director, and Sarah Hill, Emmy award winning reporter and interactive anchor at KOMU, decided to take their churning idea and run with it: U_News @ 4.
Nathan Higgins, U_News @ 4 producer, explains the show as, "a live, interactive conversation mixing television, social media, news, humor, sports, and entertainment. This is by all accounts a very broad explanation but it does get to U_News' core. We're not looking to just broadcast a newscast now and tell you what today's news is. Talking at you isn't an option for U_News. The focus now is with you."
This live broadcast is a hybrid, interactive newscast that is a conversation about you and the day's news. It's news + weather + sports with a layer of viewer Tweets, Facebook and Google Plus posts. Hosted by Sarah Hill, U_News is co-hosted with a live "cyber-couch" with up to 9 viewers from mid-Missouri and all over the world.
Q&A with Sarah Hill
Now that the show has passed the 50th show milestone, what have you learned thus far?
One thing I've learned over the last few months is the need to equip our current and future newsies with digital and social media literacy, the need to know how to report on their smart phones, how to live stream from their phones using technology like Bambuser, how to do mobile Hangouts, and how to crowd source on digital platforms.
The days of vertical, one to many communication, are nearing an end. We've got to connect with viewers horizontally, one to few, knowing viewers now have multiple platforms on which they can share our content. The old means of communication was to sit there and shout down headlines from the mountaintop. Now, viewers have TV stations in their pockets with the ability to consume and generate content themselves on their phones.
We need to teach students how to vet user generated content like this. Journalists need to know where to find it. They need to know how to marry it with their own content. Al la carte news is upon us and the menu is being posted on social media. If our students don't have that digital literacy, it doesn't matter how well they write, report or investigate….fewer and fewer will consume their content if it doesn't live on multiple platforms in this digital world.
What has the overall reaction been from KOMU viewers?
The response to U_News depends on the age of whom you ask. Our future audience (younger people) say they love the ability to interact with an anchor during a live newscast. They love the unprecedented access U_News gives viewers to our airwaves. They like that we give a platform to their comments. They like that you don't have to have a PhD to have your comments aired on the news. They like that we play local music and music videos. They like that we air a large amount of viewer photos and videos.
In contrast, our older viewers, many of whom watched Oprah and do not use social media, have commented they find the show difficult to follow. They do not understand Facebook or Twitter nor do they care what the future audience has to say about the day's news. I had a nice conversation with a woman in her 50's who said people her age "just don't care about what other people think about the news".
It's a difficult fence for a content creator to straddle: Do you innovate and try to build an audience with your future viewers? (Some of whom have totally abandoned local television news as their source of information). Or, do you do it like we've always done it and hope that the people, formerly known as the audience, will somehow magically return to watching local television news? We straddle this fence every day. As our traditional TV viewers age, we will undoubtedly find ourselves on the other side of the fence. With U_News, I'd say we have one foot firmly planted on the other side.
What are some opportunities or news coverage U_News has made possible that wouldn't have been a reality without viewer interactivity?
U_News' interactivity and live cyber couch have enabled us to bring our viewers stories that go beyond the traditional sound bite. Google Plus is essentially a free satellite truck attached to a crowd sourcing tool.
- In the aftermath of the Penn State riots, we were able to bring a Penn State student on our live Google+ Hangout to talk about what had just happened. While most media did story after story about the violence, KOMU had a perspective about a peaceful protest that also took place during the riots that few media outlets reported.
- When the mainstream media reported that the Occupy movement started on #Wallstreet, our international viewers correctly pointed out that Occupy originated in Spain….not the US.
- After our football coach was arrested for DWI, Mike Alden held a live news conference to announce the consequences for Coach Gary Pinkel. MU fans, alumni and sports bloggers watched that live news conference on our cyber couch and thousands more watched on our live streaming page. After the news conference ended, our cyber couch viewers immediately reacted live during our 4pm newscast to what they'd just witnessed.
No need to drag out gear and get person-on-the-street sound bites. The viewers came to us via our live cyber couch (G+ Hangout). The new POS (Person on the street) interviews are now "person on the stream". Inviting viewers in as the news happens, fast forwards your content. In the old days, you'd report what happened at 6 and then the reaction at 10. With an interactive newscast, you're reporting the news event and the reaction simultaneously.
What do you need to get to the next level?
The ability to clone myself and my social media ninja Jen Reeves. Technology is a beautiful thing but people don't like to interact with technology. They want to interact with a person. We've found it difficult to keep up with the fire hose of emails, tweets, Facebook and Google plus posts from viewers. If you invite them to engage, they will not only engage during the newscast, they will seek you out first as a resource for any information need. Why was there a police car in my neighborhood at 2:00 this morning? What's the number to Hot Box Cookies? Why can't I get my Facebook stream to load? Where can I find a pet sitter for my dog? All of those are real viewer questions we happily answer. Here's why. As an interactive newsie, you take on the role as the station's information operator. When you answer those questions, viewers repay the favor by sending you story tips, watching your newscast and more importantly, sharing your content on their personal social sites.
How do you plan to measure success?
Traditional Nielsen ratings may not truly reflect your reach in this digital world. If I had to guess, I would say U_News @ 4 would not be a ratings winner when the November book is released. I hope I'm wrong. But in my opinion, traditional Nielsen ratings for a program like this are an insufficient barometer because you're not measuring all of the platforms where the content is consumed. Yes U_News @ 4 airs on TV and that's what Nielsen measures is TV consumption. However, there's also a "back channel" where viewers are consuming KOMU content. Viewers are watching our show via our "cyber couch" on a Google Plus Hangout. www.gplus.to/komusarah They are watching our newscast online via our streaming page and chatting with us behind the scenes of our live show. www.komu.com/streaming-newscast. More than 130, 000 people consume our content on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and Google Plus. Since we started U_News, the number of people consuming content on my KOMU social media sites has more than tripled. I get 100 Facebook Friend requests each week. In the last four months, KOMU has amassed nearly 110, 000 followers on Google Plus, many of them international followers who aren't in our viewing area and therefore aren't measured via Nielsen. In fact, Nielsen doesn't measure any of those people who consume our content outside of our big stick in the ground. Perhaps with a hybrid newscast comes a time when a hybrid ratings system is needed. The traditional news, sales and promotion beats have changed. We walk the cyber streets now.
New media director, Jen Reeves, reflects on analytics since the start of U_News:
"Two of the biggest standouts in a review of our analytics since the U_News show started is the increased use of our streaming newscast page and the amount of traffic we're bringing to our website from Facebook. There have been a couple of major sports-related breaking news stories that drew massive traffic to our website and streaming news pages. Those events often happened around the time U_News was on the air. The show itself helped our newsroom gear up and manage a huge amount of traffic to our website."
KOMU news director Stacey Woelfel says success to him is whether the show can be replicated in other markets: " We have taken the show on with the goal of creating a model other stations around the country can look at and adopt. We know what we do will change and evolve, but at all times, we want it to be able to be replicated in other markets. To that end, we have been careful not to throw dozens of students at the program. While that "free" labor can be a great boost, it's not realistic in all markets. So we have tried to build a show that anyone can build--both in terms of the number of employees dedicated to the show, as well as the other physical resources needed to pull it off. So we will also measure success if other stations can take our model and adopt it. And we have already had some interest."
Journalism student Kelsey Alumbaugh has started a blog about different aspects of the U_News broadcast. Click here to read.
RJI and the Center for Advanced Social Research will conduct research to measure several aspects of U_News @ 4 and its impact for KOMU. Research will look at viewership and website traffic, before and after the show existed, most popular topics, and what viewers like and dislike about the show. Preliminary results are being shared with KOMU with deeper analysis available in early 2012.
For more information about the U_News @ 4 Project, contact Kelly Peery.
Kelly Peery
Communications Coordinator
Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute
573-882-9650
About the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute
The Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute works with citizens, journalists and researchers to strengthen democracy through better journalism. RJI seeks out the most exciting new ideas, tests them with real-world experiments, uses social science research to assess their effectiveness and delivers solutions that citizens and journalists can put to use in their own communities.
About The Donald W. Reynolds Foundation
The Donald W. Reynolds Foundation is a national philanthropic organization founded in 1954 by the late media entrepreneur for whom it is named. Headquartered in Las Vegas, Nevada, it has committed more than $100 million to its National Journalism Initiative in the United States.
About the Missouri School of Journalism
The Missouri School of Journalism, the world's first, is an international leader in journalism education. Some of the best journalists in the world have learned their profession through the Missouri Method, which provides practical hands-on training in real-world news media and strategic communication agencies. The School works with the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute to create the future of journalism and has six research centers dedicated to journalism. More than a dozen professional organizations, programs and centers are headquartered here.
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